Addressing Behaviors That Lead to Sharing Fake News

Gleb Tsipursky, Zachary Morford

Abstract

Some recent behavioral science research has shown why people lie, and how we can prevent them from lying. Given the alarming amount of fake news in the US public sphere, a group of behavioral science experts has sought to combine the available research in a proposed intervention, the Pro-Truth Pledge, to help address this problem. The pledge asks signees to commit to 12 behaviors that research in behavioral science shows correlate with an orientation toward truthfulness. Early results show both that private citizens and public figures are willing to take the pledge, and self-reported and external observations of present case study exhibit evidence of the effectiveness of the pledge.